


Of Shadow and Blood

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Series: Through a Glass Darkly [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Existential Angst, F/F, Female Harry Potter, Female Tom Riddle, Horror, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 17:31:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12237477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: Even serial killers should exercise caution when picking up hitchhikers. Who knew? (Certainly not Tommie Riddle, with a pathological fear of death and a taste for the macabre.)





	Of Shadow and Blood

She usually planned better than this. But here she was, driving home late at night from a gathering of fools that she did not wish to attend (but went to for the sake of finding candidates worthy to be part of future tableaux of peace, although none of them met her specifications tonight—too boring), in a car now running on empty.

Tommie pulled up to the pump, grimacing in disgust at the rundown facilities. Paint pealed liberally from the walls, the card reader for this particular pump appeared as if someone had tried to rip it from its moorings, and the only other cars in the lot were dented ancient models with horrifyingly prejudiced bumper stickers that looked as if they had been parked since sometime in the middle of the previous decade.

Sighing, Tommie exited the car and began to fill the tank. She had no desire to dawdle here. The tank filled slowly, the gasoline dripping misshapen drop by misshapen drop. She willed it to go faster...

The hairs on her neck stood on end. Had she heard something? No, the silence was filled only by peaceably chirping crickets. Yet she could not relax. A rustle of cloth— She spun about, her fists clenched—

"Pardon me."

Another woman stood not ten feet away, looking confused at Tommie's startled reaction. She had heard no footsteps approach, as if the newcomer emerged from a pocket in the air with barely a disturbance. Controlling her breathing, she asked, "Can I help you?"

The woman nodded. She was shorter than Tommie by a couple inches, with a tangle of short, jet-black hair and unusually—unhealthily—pale skin. Her stance was strange, like she wasn't resting her weight on either of her feet and would fly off into the night at the slightest breeze. "I need a ride into town," the woman said, her voice hoarse. "I took a bus out here this morning, but I got the times for the return trip wrong, and there isn't another one until tomorrow night. I'd wait till then, but I have nowhere to stay."

Tommie smiled. "You'd be mad to want to stay here. What's your name?"

"I'm Harriet. I'd hate to inconvenience you, so if you can't take me..."

Tommie hardly needed to consider. Who was she to pass up an opportunity when it stumbled in her path with a bow about its neck? "I'd be glad to give you a lift," she replied, stretching out a long-fingered hand to stem the anxious flow of words. "In fact, town happens to be my final destination also. I'm Tommie, by the way."

"Oh, thank god I thought to come here," Harriet gushed, grasping Tommie's hand in a strong grip that seemed entirely at odds with her wispy appearance.

"I'm going to go in and pay," Tommie said. "I greatly mistrust the integrity of that card reader. Are you all right out here while I go?"

"I'd rather not be alone, if it's all the same to you."

"Of course." The two of them walked across the nearly empty parking lot and entered the convenience store. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, Harriet's pallid complexion seemed even paler, unnaturally so. There was not the slightest tinge of red in her cheeks, and there was faint purple bruising beneath her eyes, as though she hadn't slept worth a damn recently. Did she ever sleep? And despite her exhaustion, she appeared surprisingly young, no older than twenty at most.

A small, rat-like man crouched behind the counter, watching them warily. "Can I help you?" he squeaked.

"I need to pay for the five gallons of gasoline I've pumped," Tommie said, plopping the requisite cash on the scratched and stained countertop. The man looked down at the cash, counted it, and put it peevishly in the register.

"You want a receipt?" he grumbled, preparing to write one out.

"No, that's quite all right. I'd just as soon forget I was ever here." The man's expression writhed somewhere between amusement and deepest offense. Harriet laughed outright. At the sound, the man seemed to take notice of her for the first time.

His eyes widened when Harriet leaned forward to meet his gaze, and he let out a faint whimper, hunching inward to make himself as small as he could. "F-fancy seeing you here," he stammered.

"It's been far too long, Wormtail," Harriet purred, giving the man a toothy smirk.

"Well, good evening to you," Tommie said over her shoulder, exiting the filthy store as swiftly as she'd entered. The exchange between Harriet and the proprietor left her uneasy... He was deathly afraid, although there was no discernible reason why. Harriet waved in mocking farewell, and the man buried his face in his pudgy hands, trembling. 

Tommie walked briskly to her car, wrenching the driver side door open and belted herself in with… but no, her hands were perfectly steady.

"Is something the matter?" Harriet asked solicitously, hopping in next to her and leaning back in her seat with a contented sigh.

"No," Tommie murmured. "Everything's fine." And if it wasn't now, it would be soon enough. Harriet was unaccountably… interesting, among other things.

The two women sat side by side, Tommie driving deliberately, Harriet considering her companion with an inscrutable expression. "Is this the way into town?" she asked after several silent miles along the deserted country road.

"Oh, we'll get there in due time," Tommie promised, reaching over to pat Harriet's cool—too cool—hand. Her nerves jangled even as she soothed her stupid passenger. Really, hadn't this girl's mother ever told her how dangerous hitchhiking could be? (Then again, no one had ever told Tommie how dangerous picking up hitchhikers could be. But she didn't need to know that. She was the most dangerous person on this road.)

"Do you know how much longer?" Harriet asked, sounding suddenly uneasy.

"Oh, as long as it takes," Tommie replied vaguely, turning her attention back to the empty road ahead.

This was her next mistake in the midst of an entire evening's worth, the first having been to offer Harriet a ride in the first place.

"I think we should stop here," Harriet said, hesitantly. "I didn't take a piss back at the gas station—too creepy in there and because Wormtail's a dick, so here looks like a good spot."

"This entire road is quiet as the grave," Tommie agreed with a faint upward twitch of her lips, pulling over near the scruffy grass along the edge. She and Harriet both got out, Tommie's heart thrumming with anticipation. This was going to be fun…

Harriet turned her back on Tommie and made to squat, but Tommie pounced with the grace of a cat, sending them both sprawling in the dirt. "I'm afraid I offered you a ride under false pretenses," she whispered in Harriet's ear, wrenching her head upward and preparing to give her a swift, fatal jab in the throat. But something stopped her. Later, she had a hard time pinpointing precisely what. The slight (overwhelming) unease she'd felt ever since meeting Harriet, perhaps. Or was it Harriet's stillness in her moment of imminent death?

Or maybe it was simply that Tommie found herself pinned on her back, her wrists held tightly above her head, with Harriet's lips at the hollow of her throat. "What did I miss?" Tommie asked, weakly trying to free herself.

"I've been watching you for weeks," Harriet said. "If it makes you feel any better, I also sought out a ride under false pretenses."

"I can't imagine what those are," Tommie growled, fruitlessly trying to extricate her wrists so she could throttle this bitch her dared pollute her design. "It would have been better for you to allow me to usher you into a peaceful rest."

"Oh, no, dear. I have no need of that," Harriet said, her face morphing monstrously. Her eyes went from (beautiful, alluring) green to a dull yellow, and needle-sharp, ivory fangs emerged from her mouth. "I have been anticipating this moment for far too long." Tommie felt the fangs prick her skin.

What was she? Tommie's first thought was a vampire, but they were only in legends and tales meant to arouse enjoyable terror and to explain the inexplicable. Yet... she was about to die, so she started believing.

"Hold on," Tommie protested, emerging from her musing. "Why? If I am about to die, surely it won't hurt to give me an explanation." Vampire, that wanted her...

"Why am I doing this?" Harriet pulled back. "I became something that should not exist, but suicide is nigh impossible for such as I. Survival instincts are too strong. In order to find peace with my existence, I drink the blood of people like you, who callously dictate the ends of others' lives."

"I don't want to die," Tommie pleaded, hating the tremor in her voice. "Please..."

"And yet you so readily give death to others," Harriet murmured. "What gives you the right to decide how others meet their ends?"

Keep talking, fool. You might live! "I am bringing them peace," Tommie whispered. "Or at least they appear peaceful…"

The face of her first kill floated to the forefront of her mind. She'd been in high school still, valedictorian and bored at the trajectory of her existence, when she'd come across a crying girl in a bathroom. Pity and a curiosity she'd always suppressed—with difficulty—came over her, compelling her to give that girl what she hadn't hitherto found. So, Tommie thought, why not be her truest friend and put her out of her misery? Thus, she had, and what a rush it had been, for in that moment, she had ultimate control over the fate of another, and, by proxy, her own. When the deed was done, she lay the girl's—Myrtle Warren's—body out gently, setting her glasses on her nose properly, tenderly wiping away all remnants of her tears, and left her there to be found by whoever would next use the bathroom. She'd wrapped her hands in paper towels to avoid leaving fingerprints on the body, and it paid off; Myrtle's killer was never identified.

"I can taste your fear," Harriet said, touching her tongue to Tommie's throat and licking slowly, sensually to her pulse point. "Is it merely death you dread?"

"I…"

Harriet manhandled Tommie into a sitting position, straddling her legs so she couldn't kick out, her arms wrapping intimately about Tommie's waist. Her hands free, Tommie proceeded to grasp Harriet around the neck, her thumb pressing hard against her windpipe.

Harriet was entirely unfazed by this, merely laughing delightedly at Tommie's efforts. "That won't work, my dear," she said. "I don't need something so banal as oxygen to live." She broke Tommie's grip easily, tucking her wrists tightly under her arms to prevent a second attempt.

"How do you know the man at the gas station?" Tommie asked, desperately seeking anything to put off the inevitable, her breath coming in pants.

"Wormtail?" Harriet mused. "Oh, erstwhile friend of my dead parents, dead because of his stupidity—" She actually growled then. Tommie felt it rumble in her chest.

Wrong question. To be honest, Tommie expected to have been dead by now. What was holding the monster back? "Well, I can't do anything to stop you," she said at last, "so why do I still live?"

Harriet's grip gentled, but did not loosen. "If you must know, there aren't a lot of women in your line of work, and I admit that I'm rather curious about you."

"Most women don't have the guts," Tommie said, feeling unusually disappointed by that state of affairs.

"But you do it out of fear of nonbeing and a desperate need for control," Harriet said. "How strong your fear must be…" She ran a hand through Tommie's now messy hair, leaning close enough that they breathed the same air. "I can smell your arousal," Harriet chuckled. "For one so afraid of dying, danger is quite a turn-on."

Tommie blushed. It was true, she thought ruefully. As Harriet's hand massaged her scalp, the familiar throbbing heat she associated with particularly successful kills, especially the first, possessed her. "Why does Wormtail still live, if you hate him so?" Tommie asked, trying—unsuccessfully—to ignore her perversion.

"Oh, trying to change the subject, are we?" Harriet hummed. "I'll humor you, nonetheless. Because my parents' deaths were accidental. He invited the vampires inside that did the deed. Truthfully, anyone could have done it. Therefore, if I were to kill him, I would cause an unnecessary death, and no lives would be saved. Besides," she added with a grimace, "the ones that actually killed my parents are many years' ash on the breeze."

"I could kill him for you," Tommie said. "He would never find peace… if that's what you want. It would be, you know, the final loose end tied up." If Harriet took her up on this, then she'd have more time, time enough to escape, perhaps…

Harriet nodded thoughtfully, her lips twisting into a strange smile. "I'll let you go when he's dead," she said firmly.

What? That was… far better a deal than she expected. "But I won't be able to kill anyone else, will I?"

"That seems like a fair exchange," Harriet agreed.

She was lying. Tommie had always been able to tell instinctually—to an extent, but now she was entirely certain. Fine. She'd make a run for it when Wormtail was dead, just as she'd intended from the get-go.

They drove back to the gas station, Harriet at the wheel, Tommie bound loosely with her own jacket in the passenger seat. ("Just a reminder of our positions," Harriet explained. "I can easily prevent an escape attempt even without you tied up.") She drove terribly fast, avoiding the only oncoming car so narrowly that Tommie was briefly in fear of a collision. Acute vampire senses, she guessed blearily.

"And here we are," Harriet said, pulling up directly in front of the (unfortunately) still-open convenience store. Perhaps Wormtail was cowering inside, rather than hurrying home as fast as possible. Fool.

"I don't have any implements that will do the job," Tommie murmured, hoping that this would buy her time, time to breathe in the fresh night air, time to feel the rapid beating of her heart, time to taste the metallic dryness in her mouth, time to know that she was. Oh god, she wanted to live!

"Stalling doesn't become you." Harriet produced a sharp blade, apparently sheathed under her sleeve. "Take this, then." Tommie took it, grudgingly testing its unfamiliar weight. So concerned had she always been with not leaving a trace when she killed that she had very little experience with knives. (Poison, blunt force trauma to the wind pipe, etc. were the best methods she knew.) This… would not be pretty.

"In you go," Harriet said, her hand pressing between Tommie's shoulder blades to urge her forward. Tommie sighed, but walked as she was bid. The door swung open quietly, but Wormtail still jumped violently, dropping the beer he was nursing behind the counter. "Wha-what do you w-want!" he squeaked, stumbling to his feet. ("You were with her, why are you back?" went unspoken.)

"Nothing much," Tommie replied, advancing, the knife held behind her back. "I think you gave me the wrong change. Why so jumpy tonight?" What a disgusting little man.

"You didn't need change! You gave me the exact amount—"

"Indeed, but perhaps you overcharge." He made an indignant noise, swaying unsteadily as he glared at her. Quite intoxicated, then. So much the better for her.

"Leave," he pleaded, coming out to meet her, his hands up, palms out. "Or take what you want. I'm unarmed…"

"Why would I wish to take anything from you? But in future, unarmed is quite a dangerous way to be, in times like these."

Wormtail didn't relax in the least. If anything, he seemed to become even more afraid.

"Doesn't your greatest nightmare stalk these parts?" Tommie queried, enjoying the power she held.

"She won't hurt me," he protested. "She'll kill you if you try anything—"

"Really?" she laughed. "I suppose we'll see about that." She leapt, baring them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs, the hand with the knife swinging forward to press against his throat, the edge of the blade ending up exactly where it needed to be. He moaned in terror. "Quiet," she snapped.

Wormtail's watery eyes were wide as they gazed at each other. However the deed was done, she always watched the life leave their eyes. Sometimes she'd croon sweetly to them as they took their last breaths, in order to ease them on their way (like that maudlin old Nazi Grindelwald she stumbled across a few years back). She would not croon for this.

"What did I ever do to you?" Wormtail slurred, his rank breath making her gag.

Tommie pursed her lips. "I told you to be quiet." Don't hesitate now, she told herself. He might sober up enough to fight you.

"Tommie," Harriet whispered from the door, her voice causing the blood to rush painfully from her extremities. "Do it now… else your death will be all the quicker."

No! Tommie bore her entire weight down on the blade, applying as much force as she normally required to damage the trachea. The blade sliced into Wormtail's throat, and in this instance, she'd greatly overestimated. When the artery ruptured, the arterial blood fountained, spattering against her face. "Argh!" she shouted, falling back in disgust. Wormtail gasped, twitching weakly in a vain effort to breathe, blood pouring from the deep wound she'd made. His eyes dimmed. Then with a final, hopeless shudder, Wormtail went still, and they went entirely vacant. Tommie treasured the familiarity.

"Well done." Harriet applauded with deliberate slowness as she trod lightly over the filthy concrete floor. She crouched over Wormtail's body first, licking the fresh blood away with a satisfied sigh. "Now, as for you—" Tommie pulled herself into a sitting position, but it didn't matter, for she was forced onto her back immediately thereafter. "You made quite a mess there," Harriet reprimanded gently, cleaning Wormtail's blood from Tommie's face in a couple brisk licks. Tommie cringed.

"I don't want to die," Tommie said again, knowing it to be useless, but at this point, she could care less.

There was a strange softening to Harriet's eyes (god, they were beautiful, and greener than any she'd seen before), so brief that Tommie knew she'd imagined it. In the next second, Harriet's face once again morphed into the monster's, and nothing but savage thirst was left. The pain of the fangs in her throat was terrible, yet she didn't scream. She lay enshrouded in a thick blanket of lethargy, knowing she was dying, envisioning the nothingness that awaited her. She had no control of anything, in the end.

"Drink, you damn fool!"

Tommie blinked heavily. What was happening?

"Drink right now, or you will be … very dead." Something was being pressed hard to Tommie's lips. Confused, she opened her mouth. Coppery-tasting liquid dribbled in. Invigorated, she began to suck. When the source of blood—for blood it must have been—was taken away, Tommie somersaulted into the blackness hovering at the edge of her vision. Death is darkness, she realized, and knew no more.

*

She came to in her own bed, the faint light of daybreak seeping through her drawn curtains. How had she gotten here? Was this death? If so, then she'd been wrong…

She had no pulse. There was no obvious compulsion to breathe. She caught a faint movement out of the corner of her eye.

"You're awake." Harriet moved to stand over her, hands hanging nonthreateningly at her sides.

"If this is death, then why are you here?" Tommie asked. "Are you a production of my subconscious, that perhaps doesn't exist, for this entire place is a lie…"

"No, nothing quite that ridiculous." Harriet settled on the mattress next to her. "The short explanation is that you aren't quite dead, and this really is your house, and I am actually here."

"How? What did you do to me?"

"I drank your blood, and you tasted mine," Harriet replied briefly. "Should be clear enough."

Tommie pushed her blankets off, sitting up and waiting to feel some difference. There was hunger… but it wasn't quite right, and wasn't yet all that insistent. Her teeth felt normal. Her vision was only slightly improved. "I didn't expect— If I had expected you to do this, I truly had no expectations as to what vampirism would be like in practice."

"Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet," Harriet laughed.

"But why?" Tommie asked. "Why do this to me?" Why was becoming increasingly irksome to say.

"I'm lonely," Harriet admitted. "I'm lonely, and I couldn't just… let you die."

Tommie laughed derisively. "And yet drinking the blood of serial killers is what you do. Are there others you 'just couldn't let die'?"

"No. You're the first." Harriet sighed. "To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing."

Tommie was… at a loss for words. Usually, when people considered her as a potential companion, she would brush them off, wait for a time, and kill them. She rather doubted that would work in this case. How then should she proceed?

"You need to eat," Harriet said after the silence stretched on interminably. "I picked up pig's blood from a butcher shop. It tastes foul, but it's adequate."

Tommie wrinkled her nose. "Is that all I must subsist on, then?" Now that she thought about it, the hunger-that-wasn't-hunger became unbearable. Harriet padded from the room, and Tommie followed tensely.

Pig's blood really was foul, and yet "foul" didn't quite do it justice. Tommie gagged as she took her first sip, but her thirst eased up, and she continued to choke it down. "You didn't answer my question," she finally snapped.

"No, I suppose I didn't." Harriet's strong fingers drummed upon the tabletop. "If you wish to continue in this existence, you will kill only those that meet my specifications. If you drink the blood of innocents, then…" She trailed away, the threat hanging in the air between them.

"But why go to the trouble? You had me exactly where you wanted me, and instead of letting me die, you—" _gave me immortality, the greatest gift you could give_. Tommie couldn't wrap her head around it: It was either the height of selflessness, or the height of stupidity… and for whatever reason, she didn't want it to be the latter.

"There's no escaping what I am," Harriet replied quietly. "Killing as I do was the only way I could reconcile the monster I became with the woman I was. But watching you these last few weeks… has made me wish I could do something to make someone else happy."

"Bringing others happiness is unnecessary for a fulfilling life," Tommie said. "But you are a fool. There is nothing stopping me from fleeing, leading you on a wild goose chase across continents leaving a swath of death in my wake."

"Let me show you a reason to stay with me, then," Harriet replied with a faint smile.

Tommie looked at her skeptically. Harriet's smile only widened.

"You never have to be alone," Harriet said, taking her hand. "You could speak of the darkest parts of yourself without the risk of legal reprisal, without the fear of being pushed away in disgust." She leaned in close, her lips brushing gently against Tommie's. Tommie stiffened, but… Hadn't she been thoroughly aroused by this woman last evening? And hadn't this woman given her her greatest desire?

She returned the kiss, tentatively—then hungrily—exploring Harriet’s mouth with her tongue; there was a faint residue of something honey-sweet and desirable. Tommie was uncomfortably certain it was her own blood, but no matter, for their kissing had reawakened the heat from the night before. Harriet's hands were tangled in Tommie's hair… then counting her vertebrae in their steady quest downward to rest firmly on her hips. Tommie moved against Harriet, wanting, wanting more…

Harriet's fingers, Harriet's mouth… Tommie came apart, screaming, "Fuck! Harriet! Oh fuck—"

Harriet moaned in response. Tommie returned the favor, giving Harriet as good as she had given. Harriet screamed, too…

"So, will you stay with me?" Harriet sighed as the two of them lay side by side on Tommie's bed (she couldn't remember quite when they'd gotten there, only that she'd never moved so quickly in her life), sated and comfortable.

"For now," Tommie replied, lazily tracing circles across the bare skin of Harriet's stomach. "We have an eternity ahead of us."

"Indeed we do," Harriet said.

"So I could—not that I will, but I could—leave once you cease threatening to kill me for attacking the wrong person. Until then, together we shall be shadowy huntresses of the night," Tommie mused, "killing only the most monstrous of them all."

Harriet nestled close. "So mote it be," she intoned, in some parody of a magic oath.

And so it was.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my attempt to smash a bunch of horror tropes together. I have no idea where it came from.  
> Vampire lore shamelessly based on Buffy.


End file.
